


Its Own Time Singing

by aderyn



Series: Daysleeper [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bedtime Stories, cases artifacts fossils & clues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-10
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-08 03:13:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/756337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John wants to send him back to that shadowy cupboard, no, that twillit promise, of childhood-time, to the fleeting moment before he understood that he would never carry easily the currencies of affection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Its Own Time Singing

_We are the song_

_death takes its own time  
singing.—Robert Hass, “Songs to Survive the Summer”_

_Once, a long time ago, in a house on the side of a mountain, there lived a woman who kept crows.  
  
_ It’s the first line, John finds out, of a story Sherlock's mother told him once, before bed, when he was seven or eight, and which he must have written (in a breaking hand, in fine black ink) on the title page of _The History of British Birds_.  
  
When he asks Sherlock about it he blinks once, crosses text to text, all matrices.

“An artifact,” he says, “sentimental.”

How to recover the rest. It’s still early, John thinks.

The time just between sleeping and waking is sacrosanct; that much he knows. It’s critical.

A firefight could start, or a sandstorm, or you could dream cases and wake up to words.

  
Sherlock, in the still-morning of a London afternoon, is trembling as always on the verge of something else. The article. The sofa. The window. The door. The precipice of their kitchen table.  Which way out today.  John wants to send him back to that shadowy cupboard, no, that twilit promise, of childhood-time, to the fleeting moment before he understood that he would never carry easily the currencies of affection, that his feathers and claws and mouldering bones would never get him very far.  
  
“Sherlock,” John says, brushes the inscription, “what's this?”

_Confuciusornis sanctus, 120 million year-old bird, elemental ghosts, biomarkers, tales spun in copper, in calcium, in zinc…_

Sherlock blinks, doesn’t touch the page.

“A fossil,” he says, “sentimental.”

No, John thinks, not a fossil, a clue.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [wiggleofjudas](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wiggleofjudas/pseuds/wiggleofjudas),  
> [Songster](http://songstersmiscellany.tumblr.com/), and [Professorfangirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart/works), who said go.
> 
> [The Chemical Ghost of a 120 Million Year-Old Bird](http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/the-chemical-ghost-of-a-120-million-year-old-bird/)
> 
> This is what I have  
> to give you, child, stories,  
> songs, loquat seeds,
> 
> curiously shaped; they  
> are the frailest stay against  
> our fears...—Robert Hass, “Songs to Survive the Summer”


End file.
